Video screencast: Why you should 301 redirect your old URLs when launching a redesigned website

So your website has been around for a few years and it’s time to redesign. Maybe you’re planning to use a CMS such as Drupal, Joomla, or WordPress, and you want to use SEF URLs instead of your old “index.asp?pageid=123” dorky ones.

Sounds like a great plan.

But wait. Aren’t all of your old URLs already indexed by Google? If you change all of your URLs, and a potential money-spending visitor links to one of your old pages from Google, will she see the new page?

No. She won’t. Sorry dude. If you don’t redirect your old URLs, then your potential visitors will get a big fat PAGE NOT FOUND message. And you don’t want that, do you?